Flexible filling systems for a wide range of products and containers

One man­u­fac­tur­er of PMMA-based liq­uid plas­tic water­proof­ing and coat­ing sys­tems for build­ing ren­o­va­tion is West­Wood Kun­st­stofftech­nik GmbH. For park­ing garages, open-air decks, roads and bridges, but also for appli­ca­tions on roofs, arcades, bal­conies and oth­er spe­cial appli­ca­tions such as heli­ports and water­proof con­crete joints, the prod­ucts must each have a num­ber of appli­ca­tion-spe­cif­ic prop­er­ties, for exam­ple, to adhere to dif­fer­ent sub­strates, be par­tic­u­lar­ly weath­er-resis­tant and with­stand high mechan­i­cal loads. The require­ments for their pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing are sim­i­lar, as they also have a wide range of viscosities.

In order to expand its capac­i­ties and, in the process, to meet the increas­ing demands of its con­stant­ly evolv­ing liq­uid resin sys­tems, the Group has there­fore com­mis­sioned a total of four new fill­ing lines over the past two years from Fricke Abfüll­tech­nik GmbH & Co. KG have been put into oper­a­tion. These reli­ably fill a wide vari­ety of prod­ucts and enable fast changeover between dif­fer­ent con­tain­er types and sizes. The liq­uid plas­tics expert par­tic­u­lar­ly ben­e­fits from the auto­mat­ed IBC fill­ing of the new lines, which sus­tain­ably improves the work­flow of the entire production.

“We have already been oper­at­ing the old­est of our total of eight sys­tems from Fricke for 20 years. As we enjoy work­ing with com­pe­tent part­ners from our region and have already had good expe­ri­ence with Fricke, it was there­fore an obvi­ous choice to com­mis­sion the fill­ing tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist again as part of our lat­est pro­duc­tion expansion.”

- Harm Stelling, Sales Manager

The com­pa­ny devel­ops and pro­duces high­ly reac­tive liq­uid plas­tic sys­tems for effi­cient build­ing ren­o­va­tion. As diverse as the pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions are, the PMMA resins have to meet a wide range of require­ments. These range from visu­al spec­i­fi­ca­tions to a very short reac­tion time as well as per­ma­nent elas­tic­i­ty and resis­tance to mechan­i­cal stress from peo­ple, fur­ni­ture, vehi­cles or even tree roots. They must also adhere reli­ably to a wide vari­ety of sub­strates and resist aggres­sive chem­i­cals such as chlo­rides and hydrolysis.

Hav­ing the right sys­tem ready for each of these pur­pos­es means fre­quent prod­uct changes on the indi­vid­ual lines in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. This in turn means that the equip­ment has to be cleaned each time, result­ing in repeat­ed down­time. In addi­tion, resins are filled into a wide range of dif­fer­ent con­tain­ers accord­ing to demand, so the old machines required fre­quent, time-con­sum­ing changes to con­fig­u­ra­tions or direct man­u­al con­trol of fill­ing oper­a­tions. “For West­Wood, it is essen­tial that the sys­tems can be cleaned very quick­ly for prod­uct changes and flex­i­bly cope with dif­fer­ent vis­cosi­ties as well as con­tain­er sizes,” knows Dirk Novak, Fill­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Sales. “For this rea­son, the new fill­ing sys­tems each have only three com­po­nents that come into con­tact with the prod­uct and can be adjust­ed to the respec­tive prod­ucts and fill­ing quan­ti­ties with­in a very short time by revert­ing to fill­ing pro­grams stored in advance.”

Improved production processes at ergonomically designed stations.

The lat­est acqui­si­tions as part of the pro­duc­tion expan­sion include two FFS 31 lines and an EFS 11, which were already com­mis­sioned in 2020, and anoth­er EFS 11 machine last year. The two com­pact EFS 11 lines are used for fill­ing dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als into open con­tain­ers such as cans, pails and hob­bocks weigh­ing between 1 and 60 kg. They are char­ac­ter­ized by their space-sav­ing dimen­sions of only about 1,000 x 800 mm, which cor­re­spond to those of a Euro pal­let. “Thanks to a down­stream roller con­vey­or and pack cen­ter­ing, the con­tain­er to be filled can be posi­tioned par­tic­u­lar­ly eas­i­ly under the fill­ing valve and trans­port­ed on quick­ly after the semi-auto­mat­ic fill­ing process,” explains Novak. “To make the process even more effi­cient, an auto­mat­ic lid clos­er was installed imme­di­ate­ly down­stream at WestWood.”

The FFS 31, on the oth­er hand, is an under-bung­hole fill­ing sta­tion with an over­head valve that fills con­tain­ers from 200 to 1,500 kg direct­ly on the pal­let. The machine oper­a­tor only needs one hand for oper­a­tion and always has an eye on the fill­ing process, which is also semi-auto­mat­ic, thanks to the oper­at­ing han­dle attached to a freely swivel­ing tele­scop­ic exten­sion. Both fea­tures min­i­mize the risk of acci­dents and errors when fill­ing larg­er con­tain­ers. Pro­duc­tion process­es ben­e­fit par­tic­u­lar­ly from auto­mat­ed IBC fill­ing, as Stelling con­firms: “Fill­ing into large IBCs no longer has to be stopped man­u­al­ly, as was pre­vi­ous­ly the case. This mas­sive­ly increas­es the effi­cien­cy of the pro­duc­tion lines.” Fur­ther­more, due to han­dling direct­ly on the pal­let, it is also no longer nec­es­sary to lift the filled con­tain­ers by hand — regard­less of whether they are drums or large IBCs. “Thanks to the new equip­ment, heavy phys­i­cal labor is no longer required and our employ­ees’ health is pro­tect­ed in the long term,” adds Stelling.

Fast changeover to varying sizes and products

All four of the new­ly imple­ment­ed lines are EX-pro­tect­ed and also have in com­mon that they can be con­vert­ed to dif­fer­ent media and con­tain­er dimen­sions with­in a very short time in line with the dai­ly require­ments of the pro­duc­tion process. “To this end, we have reduced to a min­i­mum the num­ber of com­po­nents that need to be cleaned to pre­vent cross-con­t­a­m­i­na­tion with each prod­uct changeover in both sys­tems,” explains Novak.

“For exam­ple, the valves each con­sist of only three parts that come into con­tact with the prod­uct, which can be dis­as­sem­bled, cleaned and reassem­bled very eas­i­ly by one per­son.” The inte­grat­ed soft­ware also allows dif­fer­ent fill­ing pro­grams for the var­i­ous prod­ucts and con­tain­er sizes to be stored direct­ly on the sys­tems and then acti­vat­ed with­out fur­ther ado by enter­ing the cor­re­spond­ing pro­gram num­ber on the con­trol panel.

Dur­ing the 20 years of coop­er­a­tion, West­Wood has been able to con­vince itself of the effi­cient and reli­able oper­a­tion of the sys­tems from the North Rhine-West­phalian fill­ing tech­nol­o­gy spe­cial­ist. “Since we had also pre­vi­ous­ly used Fricke machines in all three pro­duc­tion lines, our employ­ees are already famil­iar with how they work, so hard­ly any train­ing time was nec­es­sary,” sums up Stelling. “Whether it’s a mat­ter of pre­ci­sion, the clean­ing and main­te­nance effort or the adap­ta­tion to dif­fer­ent vis­cosi­ties — the sys­tems from Fricke have nev­er let us down.”